Its a busy day for me today, I release Orac into the wild, first on the Organelle , but it will be coming very soon to rPI and PiSound.
I know many of you want the Organelle patches on the rPI, and Orac is the vehicle Ive had planned for quite a while to make this happen.
not only have I got 50+ modules, but it supports midi learn, presets, remote control via osc.
(Its free, its open source and ‘complete’ i.e. its released today on the Organelle)
current module list
theres still a few things to do for the rPI, which I’ll explain below,
but to whet your appetite…
(thanks to loopop to doing a video to help spread the word)
Ive got a more detailed how to video too, not as good as loopops 
status for rPI
Its still in development for a few reasons, (aka things to do)
- currently it can be controlled via a Push 2 or editing config files, I want a more approachable solution
- packaging, I want to be easy to install, and easy to launch Orac.
the interface solution I have planned is a ‘web’ interface, so that you can setup and control the rack over wifi, on your phone/pad/computer… and of course once its setup, you’ll then be able to disconnect that if you wish, and just control via Midi or OSC
the whole project is open source, so if you want to get involved give me a shout
In particular if there is someone with experience in browser development, that could be handy to speed things up a bit.
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Wow, thanks for your efforts Mark. This is very exciting.
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The magnitude of this is only starting to reveal itself to me now 
. Thanks again Mark
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Oh wow this looks amazing! Do you have to be careful with CPU? I’ve noticed some (admittedly quite busy) patches with automationism can get pretty close to the ceiling…
Stellar work though. Can’t wait to try this out.
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depends, some modules are pretty cpu intensive (and some ive scaled back)… this is also why ive initially enabled 10 slots, to help with ‘expectations’.
I don’t know how much overhead automationism has due to things like the UI, but with Orac the modules are pretty efficient and no UI overhead.
also Orac dynamically re-patches itself, so only those modules you have selected actually exist in the patch when its running.
on balance, ive been happy enough with performance so far, and I think the rPI will be better.
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well that all sounds really fantastic. amazing work, can’t wait to see this 
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so… i’m about to get a lot of my free time back, wondering if I can get up and running with ORAC for pisound by just grabbing the patchstorage zip? is there anything in particualr that i need to be aware of?
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Super excited about this!
a better starting point would be to go to my GitHub repo and get the stuff i did with the rPI. (http://github.com/TheTechnobear)
The main thing to be aware is I cannot offer support for it at the moment, that’s why its ‘unreleased’ for the PI.
my plan is to release Orac on the rPI with a proper setup.
however, this needs to be obviously useable to most rPI users, so I cannot do that until I have written a UI to allow users to control Orac.
once that’s done, the build will be tidied up, and it will be released for the PI.
(its all why i could release it for the Organelle)
unfortunately the flipside to this, is with the limited time i have - I want to focus on this task (and supporting the released Organelle version) and I really just don’t have spare capacity, to start answering PI users individual questions on how to install it, nor time/inclination to start documenting it enough for them.
of course, its open source, so you are free to experiment with it yourself in the meantime, and if you want to document that process for others that would be awesome.
sorry, i know its not what you (and others) want to hear, but with the limited time I have available, I believe its the option that delivers to the largest number of potential users in a reasonable timeframe.
apologies again, and i just ask for your understanding, and i hope to get a proper release version for the rPI asap.
Thanks
Mark
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We’re really grateful for the time you spend on this, Mark. Just wish other people could give a hand with the code. It’d be so nice to have a full team working on this! Same thing with MEC.
Again, good job! And thanks also for letting us know about where the project is heading.
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Thanks for the info, and totally understand.
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This looks great! I wish the interface could somehow be integrated into the existing PiSound mobile app. Also, thanks for thinking of us with many not-Push-but-Push-like midi interfaces hanging around. 
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You’re thinking what we are thinking! Stay tuned! 
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he, he…
I admit, during the summer, Ive not done as much as development as id have liked…
( i never do, too much to do outside )
but ive been chipping away at it …
you can see in my development repository, the PI implementation is already done.
its building/running on organelle, pi, bela and macOS, and has both push2 and the ‘remote interface’
for the most part, i need to finish off some new core orac functionality, things that Ive learnt from the musician using orac on the organelle.
hopefully now the weather is drawing in, in next few weeks, i might get a bit more time to work on orac (and various other projects that have been ‘in the wings’)
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Dare i ask , Any plans for a full release of Orac? 
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Oooo i was shivering to see the release confirmation!!!
So excited about this !!
